Worker Bees Blog is where BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page muses about marketing, social media, customer service and other Web 2.0 inanities

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Boo, hiss, no Chrome for Mac

I don't know why, but recent reports about Google's new browser, Chrome, got me weirdly excited. It may be because I've never found a browser I totally love. I'm on a Mac, and I do use Safari 90% of the time. Firefox doesn't seem to handle the amount of tabs and windows I like to have open (or at least it didn't back when i finally gave up on it as my regular browser.) Camino was unstable back when I gave up on it. Flock was unstable back when I gave up on it. And I just never motivated myself to give the Firefoxes, Caminos and Flocks of the world new chances as they released new versions. I send my entire working day in my browser. Crashing is anathema to me.

Now, I'm no humongous fan of Google Docs, so it surprised me to find myself anxiously wanting to try Chrome. But I was.

But I can't.

Because once again Google de-prioritizes Mac users. I signed up to be notified when they decide they care about me, but that early excitement? Faded. Gone. Browser ennui is likely to set back in as quickly as it left, and Google will have missed their window of opportunity to get me to willingly go for change.

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed by this too. I have been using FF for the last couple of years, but have been hating the most recent upgrade--especially as it has rendered gmail practically unusable. So now I'm living life with two browsers open at a time--FF, so I can open the dozens of password-protected sites that I need for work, and Safari, so I can read my email. Tres frustrating!

I'm not in love with Safari, I've got to say. I really hate the way the bookmarks work. And why on earth isn't there a "Home" button?

I was really hoping for Chrome, to combine the things I need in one browser, but as a Mac user, I'm SOL.